Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood took the theatre world by storm with their first four plays. Now they've turned to TV fame for their fifth, as Viv Hardwick finds out.

WE roared with laughter when Waiting For Gateaux made its first appearance on the Customs House stage in South Shields in April. And four months on, the jokes, the characters and the slimming club scenario were just as funny for those of us watching the play for the second time on a hot August night. But then, that was not really a surprise.

Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood have certainly found the knack of plugging a gap for 21st century sit-com - and it's not just Tyneside audiences who have broad smiles on their faces. The playwriting duo's last hit - Dirty Dusting - completed a two-week run at Glasgow's King's Theatre in June and after storming into Newcastle's Theatre Royal last year, it's back at the city's Tyne Theatre this month.

In fact, Wood and Waugh will have had three plays running at Tyneside theatres in five weeks: last month's second run of Waiting For Gateaux at the Customs House, Dusty Dusting at the Tyne and their new play, The Revengers, at the South Shields venue from tomorrow to Saturday.

And yes, following on from the record-breaking first run of Waiting For Gateaux (all 2,000 seats were snapped up prior to the theatre's spring brochure appearing and the publicity machine kicking into action), before the first laugh broke out in this the play's second run, a third of the tickets had been sold for The Revengers.

"We're really delighted that people are prepared to pay their hard-earned money to see stuff we really enjoy writing," says the still bemused Ed, who admits they write "unashamedly for laughs" in an inoffensive, British humour vein and try to get more laughs per page than other writers.

The Revengers, which homes in on a fallen sex symbol from the brittle world of TV celebrities, is "a lot darker and a bit different" from the duo's four plays to date, that started with Good to Firm and revisited the horse-racing world in Raising the Stakes. "The Revengers is not what we would call an outrageous comedy, but it's still very funny and we had great fun writing it," says Ed. He promises it's the most character-driven piece to date as well - it's a three-hander - and says it brought them different research demands to get the characters right. "We spend a lot of time living with our characters, just talking about them, what they would do and inventing a history for them of why they're there. People have always identified with our characters," says Ed.

He also admits that this time round, they "devoured" other character-led plays, such as Willy Russell's Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita, Lee Hall's Cooking with Elvis and CP Taylor's work. "We drew on aspects of those plays, such as character build-up, then structured it in our own style. It didn't take long to write," says Ed.

They also had the benefit of "experienced learning help", as well as financial support from New Writing North (The Revengers is actually the first play they have been paid to write).

The prolific playwriting career of the two journalists will be put on hold for a little while after The Revengers. They've been commissioned by Ipso Facto, the film school in Newcastle, to write a film script and they're talking to a producer in Scotland about an idea for a television sitcom. Theatre may be their first love, but as Ed says: "We have an opportunity to work in different media and we want to take up that chance."

That apart, a duo whose five comedies in three years have sold out and which have enjoyed nine runs and played to almost 20,000 people to date, is surely allowed a bit of a rest.

* Tickets for The Revengers cost from £6 to £11. For more information, contact the box office on 0191-454 1234